Approaches to Early Intervention on the Navajo Reservation

This article describes a research and early intervention project that involves parents and Head Start teachers who live and work in geographically isolated areas of the Navajo Reservation. Social and environmental characteristics of life in remote areas are considered as “risk factors” that impact upon the child's probable success in school. Two promising lines of intervention are reported comprehensive instruction in child development for Head Start teachers and working with parents as children's “first teachers.” The teacher education approach involves innovative methods that build upon the Native American oral tradition. The approach to parents as “first teachers” involves Navajo parents in a structured reading approach with culturally relevant materials, where children are encouraged to reconstruct story content in a variety of representational media. Preliminary results include a dramatic rise in the number of CDA credentialed teachers and major improvements in teaching skills and satisfaction with teaching.     

A guide for the perplexed: Scientific educational research, methodolatry, and the gold versus platinum standards

The paper opens by characterizing recent discourse about empirical educational research as the “new Babel”-critics, using different theoretical vocabularies and making different deep assumptions about the nature of social life, are failing to communicate with each other. After locating some of the critical positions on a left-right continuum, the main discussion focusses upon the end of this continuum where there are located the recent attempts to restore rigor to educational research by using the so-called “gold standard” of randomized field trials. It is argued that positions at this end of the continuum misrepresent the nature of science, and some examples are briefly mentioned in order to covey the point that it is fruitful to view scientists as making convincing cases, cases that appeal to a wide variety of evidence. This assessment of scientific cases is called the “platinum standard”.     

A systems view of learning in education

As the sophistication of technology has increased, so has public demand for quality. This expectation of quality has occurred across a broad range of products and systems, including education. To meet the demand for quality, many products and systems (including educational ones) have become increasingly complex. Within education there are also other factors which have driven up levels of complexity. These factors include increased diversity in the student body, a greater emphasis on collaboration and the drive to replace simple “delivery models” of teaching. It is well known from other fields, though, that as systems become more complex, they become more vulnerable to failure. For this reason, a formalised methodology known as “systems engineering” is often applied in industry to the management of large systems. The author argues that the use of systems engineering concepts in education would be likely to reduce failure rates and improve quality. This is particularly so in large-scale complex learning systems. The paper also discusses some implications of trying to use systems engineering methodology in modern educational systems.     

Argument and Authority in the Visual Representations of Science

The focus of workplace communication research on visual rhetoric has tended to be the efficient and unproblematically “effective” functioning of visual texts. By suggesting ways in which the visual representations of science are construed by expert readers, this article responds to a call within our discipline for more critically focused contributions to the study of visual literacy. A former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Botany was asked to explain his interpretation of visuals appearing over an 80-year period in that journal; his responses illustrate how visual explanations testify to their creators' authority and how, once established, such authority actuates the rational arguments of science. Rhetorical appeals within and arrangement of visual texts are considered, as is the persuasive power of legends and captions.     

Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age

This article analyzes the location of “value” in technical communication contexts, arguing that current models of technical communication embrace an outdated, self-deprecating, industrial approach subordinating information to concrete technological products. By rethinking technical communication in terms of Reich's “symbolic-analytic work”, technical communicators and educators can move into a post-industrial model of work that prioritizes information and communication, with benefits to both technical communicators and users.     

Education and internal migration: A review and report

In April 1981, the Education Study Group of the Development Studies Association (of Britain) held a workshop on “Education and Migration” at Liverpool University. The following seven papers form an extended summary of the proceedings, offering a general review and cases in five countries, four African and one Latin American.The broad conclusion is that the propensity to migrate from rural to urban areas tends to rise with educational attainment. However, structural factors within a society as well as changing economic circumstances can affect the relationship. The increased availability of schooling will tend to reduce the migration of the less schooled, to the presumed benefit of their home areas.     

Achievement Goals and Student Well-Being

This study is concerned with the role that achievement goals may play in facilitating the psychological well-being of students. Specifically, we build on “goal theory” analysis of adaptive behavior in examining the relationship between task and ego goals, perceptions of school emphases on task and ego goals, and indices of well-being and disruptive behavior. Generally, task goals and perception of the school as emphasizing task goals were related to positive psychological well-being, and ego goals and perceiving the school as emphasizing ego goals were related to negative psychological well-being. This pattern was found for both African American and Euro-American students. However, path analyses pointed to possible different processes as operating for the African Americans and the Euro-Americans in the sample.     

Family background, financial constraints and higher education attendance in China

Using data from the 2004 China College Student Survey, conducted by the author, this paper finds that long-term factors such as scholastic ability and parental education are significantly correlated with higher education attendance. By contrast, short-term financial constraints are also significantly associated with higher education access, but to a lesser degree. Furthermore, in recent years China's higher education expansion has provided broader access to students from lower income families. However, the tuition fees and “net prices” of elite universities are lower than those of medium quality universities, while the tuition fees and “net prices” of medium quality universities are lower than those of relatively low quality universities and colleges. This has led to a reverse relationship between family income and attendance costs, such that lower income families now shoulder a much higher burden for their childrens’ university education than higher income families.     

Cognitive processing, language awareness, and reading in Grade 2 and Grade 4 children

The role of cognitive processing and language awareness in relation to reading is discussed. The framework for cognitive processing was Luria's (1966a, Higher cortical functions in man, New York: Basic Books; 1966b, Human brain and psychological processes, New York: Harper & Row) simultaneous and successive syntheses. Language awareness involved understanding of phonological representation, ambiguities, and incongruities. The sample of 56 Grade 2 and 64 Grade 4 children was administered a battery of seven “simultaneous-successive” tasks. Principal component and promax oblique factor analyses and factor scores were used to classify the children as low-low, low-high, high-low, and high-high simultaneous-successive “processors.” A series of ANOVAs showed significant differences by grade and level of cognitive processing for the three language awareness tasks and for reading. These tasks and factor scores derived from the simultaneous and successive components of the within correlation matrix for the total sample of 120 children after removing covariance associated with the two grades were subjected to stepwise multiple regression analyses and a path analysis to tease out the contribution of these components to reading. Results showed a much greater direct effect from language awareness on reading than simultaneous and successive syntheses. Ability to reflect on language and to use language as “disembedded modes of thinking” are seen as central to reading acquisition and development.     

“To make the tacit explicit”: Teacher education, emerging discourse, and conceptions of teaching

The influence of teacher education on teaching is a problematic area, both in practice and in research. Often, because much research adopts a “first-order” perspective which focuses on teachers' behaviors, influences of teacher education are seen as temporary, negligible, or difficult to determine. The study reported here grew out of a general concern to document, via a “second-order” perspective which examines their thinking and perceptions, how teachers modify or improve what they do through formal teacher education. It addresses three important areas which have received little attention in recent research: foreign language teaching, in-service graduate education, and the role of a shared, professional discourse in developing teachers' conceptions of teaching. The paper presents a summary of the findings of an 18-month longitudinal study which examined how foreign language teachers' conceptions of their classroom practice developed as they took part in an in-service teacher education program. The paper discusses how the program's shared professional discourse contributes to increasing the complexity of the teachers' thinking about their teaching and suggests that as they learn to articulate their de facto ways of thinking in the shared discourse, the teachers gain greater control over their classroom practice and are thus more able to shape it to their own ends.     

Development of gender attitude traditionality across middle childhood and adolescence

The development of gender attitudes in 402 youth (201 firstborn and 201 secondborn siblings) in 201 European American families was examined using data collected on seven occasions across 9 years. Pooling across siblings and using multilevel modeling, we examined gender attitude development from ages 7 to 19. Consistent with an ecological perspective, the combined effects of individual (i.e., sex, age, birth order) and contextual (i.e., parents' gender attitudes, sibling sex) characteristics predicted patterns of change. Although most youth declined in traditionality, the attitudes of firstborn boys with brothers and traditional parents became more traditional over time. No one longitudinal pattern captured the development of gender attitudes; trajectories varied as a function of contextual and personal characteristics.     

Body size and form of black and white female youths measured during 1974-1975 at Columbia, South Carolina.

From original data at age 13 years on 386 North American females (201 black and 185 white), statistics are presented for 10 somatic variables. The 2 ethnic groups yield similar means for standing height, arm girth, and leg girth; the black females, contrasted with their white peers, are shorter in sitting height, longer in lower limb height, and narrower in hip width. The Columbia subjects are compared with black and white females studied in North America several decades ago, and with black and white females studied recently in other parts of North America and in Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Lesser Antilles.     

Figures of Speech as Persuasive Strategies in Early Commercial Communication: The Use of Dominant Figures in the Raleigh Reports About Virginia in the 1580s

During the mid-1580s Sir Walter Raleigh, operating under letters patent of Queen Elizabeth, supported two major voyages to establish an initial colony in Virginia. These two voyages produced three major commercial reports that evaluated the economic potential of the region for English colonists and merchants. The reports, written by Arthur Barlowe, Ralph Lane, and Thomas Hariot, represent the beginnings of American commercial communication in English. Using Kenneth Burke's idea of the four major tropes, this article develops the notion of the “dominant figure”—a figure of speech that serves to focus a report's rhetorical power—to analyze the persuasive effects of these reports.     

Child abuse and neglect—rare, but perhaps increasing, phenomena among the samia of Kenya

This study shows that child abuse and neglect as understood in the West are comparatively rare phenomena among the Samia of western Kenya. The existence of an extended family situation and a strong clan structure are importantly related to positive care accorded to children. However, due to increased migration to towns, socioeconomic change, and interethnic marriages, the clan unit has been eroded thus resulting in cases of child abuse and neglect. Several such cases are reported in this study. The Samia traditionally practice the “evil eye” which is here considered to be a form of child abuse. Our findings, therefore, also have implications for previous efforts to define child abuse cross-culturally.     

Children's Transition Into Full-Time Schooling: Black/White Comparisons

The transition from “home child” to “school child” is an important social milestone and encompasses a life period that has not received as much attention as it may deserve. Poor black children, who are those with the most social interaction disabilities, seem particularly vulnerable in the early part of this transition. A further complication is that “summer learning” helps mainly well-off children, and blacks in the population-at-large are less likely to be well off than whites. Although schools do seem to be making up for the dearth of academic socialization resources in many young children's households, and in this sense are most beneficial for those who need them most, more work is needed on why schools are not filling the bill as well for the neediest blacks as they are for the neediest whites.     

拓展国内区域贸易,提升产品国际竞争力

大国国内区域贸易能够在全国范围内配置资源,在全国范围内实现分工和专业化经济以及规模经济,并且营造了企业发展所必需的竞争环境,因而能够提升产品国际竞争力。文章实证分析了我国区域贸易的现状和区域贸易可拓展的空间,并以美国国内区域贸易提升美国产品国际竞争力为例对理论进行了检验,认为提高我国产品国际竞争力的一个办法就是拓展国内区域贸易。     

Two approaches to the handling of child abuse: A comparison of the English and Dutch systems

The legal and administrative systems for handling child abuse cases in England and The Netherlands are briefly described and it is argued that the two systems illustrate respectively the “legal” and “medical” models. The implications for this in practice are contrasted. In England the stress is on careful adherence to criteria for abuse, on procedures for placing children's names on child abuse registers, and removing them if they are no longer at risk, while in The Netherlands the stress is on family need with the abusive incident being regarded as no more than a signal that help is needed. This allows a much wider definition of abuse. In England sexual and emotional abuse are still relatively rarely used as grounds for intervention whereas in the Netherlands concepts such as “cognitive abuse” and “sexual neglect” are gaining currency. Other implications of the models such as differences in attitudes to confidentiality and public attitudes to authority and to seeking help are considered, as are the consequences for incidence figures. The handling of two cases with very similar circumstances are compared. Finally, it is argued that while each system might present the other with new ideas, the systems have to be seen in the social context of the two countries and neither system is likely to appear superior to professionals in the other country.     

Serpents and Sheep: The Harriman Expedition, Alaska, and the Metaphoric Reconstruction of American Wilderness

This article examines one mechanism for the radical change in public perception of wilderness. The published papers of the Harriman Expedition, a scientific expedition at the end of the nineteenth century, are used to illustrate a process that I call “metaphoric reconstruction.” I argue that conceptual metaphors are one of the tools through which texts and rhetorical contexts can be mutually transformative.     

Emotion Talk in Preschool Same-Sex Friendship Groups: Fluidity over Time and Context

Recent research suggests that through the medium of “emotion talk”, American, middle-class parents socialize daughters to express emotion more and to focus on sadness and socialize sons to express emotion less and to focus on anger. However, little is known about peer emotion socialization. The present study utilizes a notion of “emotion talk” expanded from previous studies and follows its use among preschool peers using a longitudinal design. Two friendships groups in a mixed-age preschool classroom of 3-and 4-year-old children at a university-based children's center were identified and videotaped in different contexts at different time points in the academic year. The boys' friendship group evolved norms over time against the expression of scaredness simultaneously with norms downgrading girl characteristics. Both the boys' and girls' friendship groups showed contextual fluidity in the expression of emotion and emotion talk that argue against an essentialist model of emotion socialization and development. This study's findings of contextual fluidity in emotion talk suggest policy implications for the promotion of gender equity. Mixed-age classrooms that provide children with a range of opportunities to engage in activities that cross gender boundaries may minimize gender polarization and maximize gender equity.